I quite liked the ride of my Cotic X, but found it a quirky bike… it’s not really a CX bike at all even though it’s marketed as one, but for your intended use is possibly ideal.
The annoying quirks (to me) were:
– very poor bottle cage locations(2 on the down tube). Cotic’s rationale doesn’t stack up on this one… there’s just nothing at all wrong with one on the DT and one on the ST. Cotic have created possibly the worst compromise ever, as when you do run 2 bottles on the X they are both in awkward positions… Duh!
– Neither fish nor fowl in the braking dept. You either run discs or cantis. Cotic’s canti bosses are a fugly, Heath-Robinson affair that is unnecessary, heavy and detracts from the visual appeal of what is an otherwise lovely looking frame. If running discs you want a clean, uncluttered look yet you’re left with fugly bolts or blanks covering the unused brake boss mount holes. Double duh!
– 135mm OLN spacing. Required for disc rear hubs but rules out 100% (?) of road hubs… you can use a road rear wheel by squeezing the rear dropouts 5mm in when you wind up the QR skewer. IME and in practise this is a PITA and again just detracts from the quality and experience of what is otherwise a lovely looking frame.
– Slack steering. My Cotic X was noticeably slack in the steering dept vs. lots of other CX bikes I tested, rode or owned back-to-back: Santa Cruz Stigmata, Ridley, Specialized Crux etc…
As I said, for towpaths, hooning around, commuting etc the X is a great bike – but as it currently is configured it’s just not up to it as a CX bike. I sold mine, replacing it with a Spesh Crux. Shame, as I still love the small diameter steel-tubed CX frame look, I liked the overall ride feel (barring the slack steering), and the quality of the frame construction/welding was great.
What I’d love to see from Cotic is an X made from better quality steel, with revised geometry, canti-only or disc-only (not both), and bottle cages on DT and ST. I’d buy one, as I think lots of others would.
